4 of 5Arutunoff's trophy case sits among his trophied collection of cars.

Photo by Phil Berg

5 of 5A Le Mans MG rests in front of a cluttered workbench.

Photo by Phil Berg

James Thurber’s iconic character Walter Mitty actually wanted to become Anatoly Arutunoff, we believe.

“Toly” has raced with Bob Bondurant, Phil Hill, Richie Ginther, Dan Gurney, Ak Miller, and Carroll Shelby back when cars slid, drivers were visible, and the average privateer like Arutunoff could finish fourth in a grand prix race against the factories. His father invented a special in-ground pump for oil wells that served the oil industry boom early in the 20th century, and relocated the family from Czarist Russia to Oklahoma. His family aimed at overachieving: His sister Ana invented a holographic art medium called Holodeons, which intrigued and were collected by artist Salvador Dali.

This story was originally published in 2007.

Even though Arutunoff is proud of his ancestry, and his family’s accomplishments, he considers himself a true American and pokes fun at his heritage. “Well, my mother was Ukrainian,” he says, “and my father was Armenian, and there are portions of my mother’s family who didn’t think my father—being from Armenia—was a white person. He came from the Caucuses mountains, where the word Caucasian originated. Once at a gathering, a relative of my mother’s came up to me and said ‘You know we still call your dad black.’ ” He considers the irony, and adds, “You know, America is the least racist place on the planet.”

Whatever the genealogy, his parents supported his car desires, especially at the times the family was living at a home they owned in Los Angeles. “The first thing they did was lie to get me a driver’s license at age 15. That’s because once when I was 14 and living in Los Angeles, I went to see a friend, and his mother asked me if I wanted to drive their Peugeot convertible. All I remember about that car is that it had a separate key for the door, gearshift lock, ignition, and trunk. I drove that thing all over L.A.” His parents got him a ’51 Belair hardtop; he specified a manual transmission for it. Then when he went to college he lusted after a Jaguar 120 as a replacement for the Chevy. However, master macabre actor Vincent Price purchased the family’s L.A. home, and back to Tulsa they moved. “My parents said if they still had the house in L.A., they would buy a convertible XK 120 for me, but because we lived in Oklahoma, they said ‘we’ll get you a Lincoln convertible, or people will talk about us.’ ”

So Toly added headers and dual exhausts which came out through running boards, to the Lincoln. He added a supercharger and alcohol injection. He also added a “continental kit” and he had the convertible top made entirely of clear plastic. “It would do 133 mph, and peel the tread off the tires.”

Although Arutunoff began racing in “normal” sports cars, such as his Porsche Carrera Speedster in 1957, and then a really quick short-wheelbase Ferrari in Italy’s spectacular Targa Florio enduro in 1967, he considers them just tools of their time. You get the sense, even, that he’s bored with these super-classics.

In the 1970s, he drove in two genuine Cannonball Baker coast-to-coast races, and has raced on just about every road race circuit in the U.S. and many in Europe. He even built his own road course, the Hallett Motor Racing Circuit, not far from Tulsa. And he still drives in European vintage rallies, and was seriously considering the latest Bullrun outlaw jaunt from Montreal to Key West last May. “I also won the very first Palm Springs vintage race. I ran the first two Colorado Grands, the Copper State in Arizona, the first Silver State open highway race in Nevada, then we put on four rallies ourselves: One in Arkansas called the Hillbilly Mille, two in Las Vegas and two French road rallies, one themed “the French chefs” and one for the Champagne region.”

What appeals to Arutunoff about the vintage rallies isn’t the speed of cars on a racetrack, but the recollection of driving quickly on real roads, and the attitudes of the spectators of real road races gone by. He specifically remembers the 50th anniversary of the Grand Island, New York, road race, a re-creation of a five-mile run the town’s mayor hosted in more innocent times. “He just let them drive as fast as they wanted all day. One guy in a Porsche went off, flew over a woman with a baby buggy, and the result was the dealer sold a whole bunch more cars because of how safe the car was because the driver lived. People said it was really exciting. The Porsche actually hit a car in the parking lot and landed upside down.”

These days gentleman racer Arutunoff says his small collection of one-off, uniquely crafted sports cars mean the most to him. There’s a reason for this: Not even jaded car enthusiasts have ever seen some of the cars that he’s parked in his 10-car garage, “Real gearheads, car guys, everyone loves seeing the oddity of the cars here, because they’ve never seen them before. It doesn’t matter if you like them or not. Six cars here are one of a kind or one of three total. It’s great fun—weirdness like this red Lancia that needs paint. Young Andrea Zagato was there when I first showed the car, and he looked at it and said ‘original paint?’, and I said, ‘No, it’s been painted. It was dark green and the English folks I bought it from painted it ‘resale red.’ ”

Arutunoff is a confirmed old-car junkie. “I get so fed up reading about new cars, if it doesn’t have 350 hp, it’s underpowered.” One of his Lancias, a Flavia Zagato, he calls the ugliest ever made. He owns a Cooper Mark IV that even confused John Cooper as to its origins: “John Cooper looked at it, and it was a Mark IV sports, and he said to me ‘It looks kind of like one.’ ”

Arutunoff also has a slick concept Studebaker-powered Ascot. “This was to be the competitor to the Corvette. The first one looked like a Ferrari. This one was the April ‘54 Hot Rod cover car. I bought it in Center Harbor, New Hampshire.”

He also has an MGA that was re-styled with four different kinds of wood making up most of its body. He has a concept AC Bristol with a Zagato body that never went into production, “This is a one-off, and they were going to go into production, but Zagato cancelled it. Huge amount of rear leg room because it’s on a sedan chassis.”

Arutunoff’s one-off of all one-offs is the tube-frame, canvas body roadster he calls the “Lapin Agile” (AutoWeek, April 9, 2000) that he built himself. “It has a straight-eight engine. I wanted an exhaust that came all the way down the side, and the guy fabricating the exhaust got cute and put it under the curved fender. There’s no emergency brake, so I have some wheel chocks, but they’re covered in leather. These cylinders are the gas tanks,” he describes. Canvas covers the engine, and unsnaps for access. “I can’t believe that canvas hasn’t burned yet.” At 70 years old, he still has more designs that he wants to build, too.

Just after his first marriage 10 years ago, two weeks shy of his 60th birthday, Arutunoff built his garage behind his pool, with French doors and an office, and ivory-tinted epoxy floors so that it “didn’t look like a garage,” says wife Karen. “He really does need a place of his own. When I met him he was living in a 4,000 square-foot house, and it was full of this stuff. I told him, ‘I understand stuff. I have stuff. I love all of your stuff. But I’m not sure I want it in the house.’ ”

Although Arutunoff at one time owned the first Ferrari dealership in Oklahoma, as well as Ford, Saab, Saturn, BMW, Volvo, Mazda, and Sterling shops, he’s pared down to a share of a Honda store, and even though it provides him a new Accord as a daily driver, he’s more fond of doing errands in his quirky Subaru SVX, “which is the rare front-drive model,” he jokes.

He’s trying to figure how to squeeze one more car into the garage, a Cunningham, also a one-of-a-kind, which is being restored as a project at a local outreach church called “Guts.”

“We are the oddest people in the church,” says Karen. “It’s all run by young kids, and the pastor is a great friend who is a motorcycle nut. We are the oldest people by 30 years. Toly is like the mascot.”